Name

XML.nodeName Property — the name of the current node

Availability

Flash 5

Synopsis

theNode.nodeName

Access

Read/write

Description

The nodeName string property reflects the name of theNode. Since only two node types are supported by ActionScript (element nodes and text nodes), nodeName has only two possible values:

  • If theNode is an element node, nodeName is a string matching the tag name of that element. For example, if theNode represents the element <BOOK>, then theNode .nodeName is "BOOK".

  • If theNode is a text node, nodeName is null. Note that this diverges from the DOM specification, which stipulates that nodeName for a text node should be the string "#text". If you prefer, you can use the DOM-compliant nodeType property instead.

Example

We can use nodeName to check whether the current node is the type of element we’re seeking. For example, here we extract all the content of H1 tags on the first level of an XML document (this example checks only for tags named H1, not for tags named h1 with a lowercase h):

myDoc = new XML('<H1>first heading</H1><P>content</P>' +
                '<H1>second heading</H1><P>content</P>');
for (i = 0; i < myDoc.childNodes.length; i++) {
  if (myDoc.childNodes[i].nodeName == "H1") {
    trace(myDoc.childNodes[i].firstChild.nodeValue);
  }
}

See Also

XML .nodeType, XML .nodeValue

Get ActionScript: The Definitive Guide now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.